SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

are as beautifully and precisely made as fine jewelry. Carefully removing these tefillin from
their bag and then from their outer protective cases as the ritual begins is, in some strange way,
to feel a gate opening slowly into a sacred dimension. 5 And they raise questions. Why two boxes,
one for the heart/hand and another for the head/mind? But, as with the Ten Commandments,
one stone could have sufficed, but two were prescribed. And why four prayers, a number
echoed in the four sides of a square which is the prescribed form of the tefillin?
What I have observed is a consistent and unique aesthetic created through the ages by Judaic
culture beginning with the Tabernacle descriptions in Exodus. It would be easy to ascribe this
aesthetic to a kind of minimalist tradition of deliberate severity of abstraction to avoid graven
imagery. Such an assumption would not be altogether incorrect. The weakness of such an
explanation, however, lies in its very simplicity and the literalness of its reading of the Second
Commandment. Implying a completely negative approach or rejection of the aesthetic has
come to be the familiar aversion to looking for any contribution to art from the Jewish tradition
or its scripture. The Judaic aesthetic is not simply a negative against the graven image, but a
subtle, complex, carefully calibrated positive and intricately woven set of choices, limitations,
innovations, and rejections that build up to an aesthetic cohesion as unique and unified and
influential as any in antiquity.
III. SHAPE AND RITUAL BECOME COVENANT AND JOURNEY
The altars of ancient Egypt were square at the top and base. Their pyramids were built upon a
square base and the holy of holies of their temples, the room of the statue of the temple god
was a cube form. Their buildings and statues were oriented to the cardinal points. 6 Their
priestly offerings were sprinkled to the north, south, east and west sides of their altars. 7 West
was the most sacred direction denoting the land of the dead by way of the setting sun and it was
also the direction the pharonic statues faced. For reasons unknown, the number “four” was
sacred to the Egyptians and the square was a visual diagram of “four.” 8
The altars of the ancient Israelites in both the Tabernacle and later Temples were also square
at the top and base. Their offerings too were oriented to cardinal points. 9 It may be more than
coincidental, but fascinating in any case, that when a pharaoh died, the four sacred viscera
were removed from his body (liver, spleen/stomach, kidneys, and intestines) and placed in four
canopic jars which were then placed in a cube shaped box and interred in his tomb. 10 Egypt
was the civilization from which the Israelites emerged, as slaves and as a nation. The Ten
Commandments and the prayers in Tefillin remind us of the fact.
It is a reasonable assumption that this sacred Egyptian vocabulary of forms would have been
familiar to the Israelites and held in some form of awe. It then became the task of Moses
Rabbenu (Hebrew for “our teacher”) to do what all creative teachers have always done, use the
familiar to invent new relationships to inspire a new way of thinking. In this case, it meant
using a vocabulary of idolatry to teach the thought and language of moral monotheism. The
Judaic or Mosaic substitutions, deletions, and additions are almost obvious from a comparative
study of Egyptian art and the biblical texts of Exodus. Such is the march to individuation of all
cultures and art throughout history; the evidence of influence is the proof of underlying
innovation.
The very mystery as to the origin of the tefillin’s shape may also have a clue in their apparent
Egyptian connection. Any reference to similarity or origin of those sacred objects to the
experience of bondage and idolatry would need to “get lost.” Thus the biblical narrative, so full
of precision regarding material and size of the Tabernacle structures, expresses no hint of the
symbolic meanings of shapes, colors, or forms. No aesthetic references or discourse tells us in
Torah or Talmud why the precise details described for sacred objects are the way they are. As
for tefillin, no form whatever is described in the Torah but their physical shape reflects the
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